4chan is lousy with alt-right racists, white nationalists, neo-Nazis, KuKlux Klan supporters, and neo-fascists, but — to use the words of theirdear leader — “some, I assume, are good people.”

Unsurprisingly, it was in the festering bowels of the site that analt-right troll hatched the idea to smear antifa activists by creating aphony leftist campaign encouraging physical violence against womenright-wingers. A recovered 4chan post explicitly instructing the site’stroll army to find graphic domestic violence images, pair them withmessages stating the abuse was deserved for political reasons, and addhashtags including #PunchANazi, #RacistWhiteWomen and #PunchWhiteWomen.(Can we pause here to recognize the irony of far-right neo-Nazissubconsciously recognizing the racism and benevolent sexism that makeswhite women the necessary targets of this campaign to elicit nationaloutrage? I mean, the layers.)

Within hours of the plan’s conception, a horde of fake antifa socialmedia bots — and there are many — were tweeting out the images, as wereactual right-wing stars like Infowars’ Joseph Paul Watson. Salon notesthat “one commenter claimed to have emailed news outlets to see ‘iftheyll take the bait,’ as they pretended to be an antifa activist.”Before the right-wing blogosphere could fall for the plot, the wholething was unraveled by Bellingcat’s Eliot Higgins, who dug up the actualroots of the campaign and tweeted evidence implicating 4chan’s alt-righttrolls in the hoax. (!!!)

The guy who lied about a nonexistent black man attacking him for his haircut

On August 16, when post-Charlottesville racial tensions were runningparticularly high and neo-Nazis were the lede of every news item,Colorado’s Joshua Witt apparently felt like the odd racist out anddecided to get his own 15 minutes of fame. Witt posted a Facebook updateclaiming a stranger in a fast-food restaurant parking lot had attemptedto stab him for his “neo-Nazi” haircut. He reportedly gave police adetailed assailant description of a “black man in his mid 20s, 5ft 10in,wearing a green shirt and blue pants” — because why shouldn’t someinnocent African American already feeling traumatized by currentnational events, not to mention the daily racism of American life, go tojail because someone is an attention-seeking pile of sentient humangarbage? As Gizmodo notes, right-wing media ate the fakery up, with theAlex Jones Show, Inside Edition and Fox News all repeating the story.

Police figured out Witt was lying for a number of reasons: at the timeof the fake attack, he no longer had the “fashy” haircut he claimedprompted it, there were no witnesses from the packed parking lot and thesurveillance cameras hadn’t documented anyone running away from thescene. You know what the cameras did pick up? Video of Witt buying aknife at a nearby store.

Confronted with the evidence, Witt admitted he’d actually stabbedhimself. He was arrested for making a false report, and now faces up toa year in jail and a fine of $2,650.

Actor James Woods, who promised he was quitting Twitter last year butkeeps right on yapping away, spends a lot of time tweeting semi-racist,misogynist, Trump-obsessed alt-right memes. (Terrible work if you canget it and you’re terrible enough to want it.) About a week afterCharlottesville, he tweeted this photo and hashtagged it #Hategroup and#Antifa. The problem is that it isn’t a picture of American antifa in2017, but of anti-fascists in Dover, England, in 2015. Vice, whichoriginally published the photo, was actually moved to call out Woods andthe many other right-wing entities that have gotten the backstory wrongin employing the photo for their own propagandist ends. Vice writes:

The image has been used in, among other things, an article callingan anti-Trump protest in November “terrorism”; an article comparinganti-fascists to the KKK, saying they’re “affiliated with theDemocrats”; a conspiracy website’s write-up of a story about a differentanti-fascist in Pennsylvania who actually did get arrested for attackinga police horse; an “open letter” to anti-fascists from a “patriot”threatening them with violence; an Infowars story about MSNBC and CNNpurportedly “promoting” anti-fascist violence; a blog post about apetition for the White House to recognise Antifa as a terrorist group;and “Texas: Antifa Faggots SHUT DOWN by Brave Nazi Warriors” on awebsite called Jew World Order.

In the ongoing effort to prove the #ManySides theory that fascism andracism are exactly like anti-fascism and anti-racism, this photo wasshared across conservative echo chambers in the days afterCharlottesville. It purports to show a member of antifa — you can tellby the logo on the attacker’s jacket — beating a police officer duringthe “Unite the Right” rally. What it actually shows is a Getty imagefrom Greece in 2009. Some neo-Nazi supporter Photoshopped the patch ontothe protester’s back. Because no low is too low.

Snopes debunked the image, and even went through the trouble of creatinga video explainer, below.

A pretty good rule of thumb for distinguishing neo-Nazi propaganda fromantifa materials is that the latter doesn’t contain blatant anti-Semiticslurs. I mean, that’s kind of the major point of contention betweenthese two factions. That was apparently lost on the dumb neo-Nazis whocame up with this fake antifa flyer; they stuck an anti-Jewish epithetright at the top of it, maybe not realizing they basically left aneo-Nazi calling card. Who talks about “heeb masters” except whiteracist conspiracy nuts who think the George Soros-funded globalist NWOis going to elect a Muslim chemtrail for president? They literallycouldn’t even suppress their Jew hatred for the one hour — maybe two,tops — it takes to design a pamphlet free of slurs so it could pass forthe real thing.

Also, it openly advocates for the murder of white children, which istotally a thing a group would publicly hand out flyers for. They wouldalso make sure to stamp said call for murder with their logo.

The other telltale giveaways are enumerated by @AntifaNYC, which gaveSnopes a rundown of the obvious fails:

– there is no such group called the “national antifa front.” thereis only one national group in the US and it is the Torch Antifa Network.And I can only think of one antifa group that uses the term “front” —and none use the term “national,” which in the context of our work has afar right connotation.

– No one wants to kill white people. This is a perverted reading ofthe idea of the “abolition of the white race” which says that theCONCEPT of whiteness needs to be dispensed with — NOT literally harminganyone. no antifa ever says things like the “evil white race.”

– no antifa would ever use this language of the “to do what must bedone,” “after the purge,” or “workers paradise.” this is a cartoonishimage of Stalinism. most antifa are anarchists [and] are opposed to allthis.

There are countless numbers of fake African-American Twitter accountsset up by alt-right members and other assorted racists. You can usuallytell they’re fake because they’re jam-packed with uncreativestereotypes: forced hip-hop slang, references to stuff racist whitepeople think all black people are into, “black names” that sound likethey were made up by racist white people, and on and on you get thepoint. Basically, if it seems like the profile came out of a racistTrump supporter’s fever dream, it probably did.

My point is, lack of nuance or subtlety is a recurring theme with theseanti-antifa campaigns. The Antifa Manual, which recently made the roundsamong right-wingers, is a distillation of nonsensical antifa urbanlegends and liberal stereotypes. Some posters claimed it was found at —where else? — Evergreen College. The cover states, “Do not distribute toany cis white males, non-PoC, non-LGBTQ peoples a.k.a. fascists” becausethe person who wrote it clearly overlooked the fact that cis white malesactually dominate antifa spaces. (Under any other conditions, that factwould make white racists proud, actually.) Throughout the seven-page“manual,” which you should really check out for yourself, are ridiculousideas that right-wingers imagine black leftists fantasize about, runthrough a machine that imbues them with the racism of the right.

“Those who can’t work will be provided a stipend and unlimited supply ofopiates, marijuana, meth and cocaine to occupy their free time,” onepassage declares. “Container ship after container ship will be convertedto massive passenger cruise-liners and will ferry poverty-stricken brownpeople from around the world to the (former) United States and WesternEurope,” states another passage.

The Washington Post reported last week that Trump, in an unusual move,personally intervened to try to prevent Iowa from being granted what isknown as a 1332 waiver, which gives states more flexibility in enforcingthe Affordable Care Act.

If Trump’s wish is granted, an estimated 72,000 Iowans would not haveaccess to the individual health insurance markets next year, stateofficials have said.

It’s time to act because people are suffering. Where do the 72,000Iowans go if they don’t have access to the individual market,” Rep.David Young (R-IA) said in a local TV interview. “...If theadministration is balking on this for political expediency, I don’tthink that’s right.”